HISTORY ROAD CHALLENGES FROM BOOMERPDX

Staunton, Virginia, 2016. Image via DG Studios

The current state of history road challenges.

Westies, people living beyond the Mississippi, and beyond the Great Divide in the Rockies, live with problems of modern America, along with the rash of chain stores you can’t escape.

If a town like Staunton, Virginia, like most towns in Virginia, have centuries of history behind them, why ruin the effect of age with big box stores, corporate chains, and franchises?

In England you park your car and ride the bus to significant sites. Virginia ought to do the same.

Park the car and take the bus if you really want to see the sights.

Home Depot parking lots would work as bus stops. Hop from car air conditioning to bus air conditioning, and walk the walk.

You see more on foot than car, stopping to look instead of driving by, back tracking, finding a parking place, then sweating like a horse before making your first stop and look.

Those are history road challenges.

And Virginia has history like nobodies business.

From early settlements, Indian battles, Revolutionary War, and Civil War, this might be the state to best define America. The lady at the state information center said more American blood spilled on the dirt between Virginia and Gettysburg than any place in the world.

She said sixty percent of the Civil War happened in Virginia.

The towns and cities in the region hold that history, and it’s fading under the modern facade.

Who doesn’t get distracted from the legacy when it includes the same signs, same stores, as everywhere else? How important is history when things look just like your non-historic sub-division?

Making something special for interested travelers doesn’t subtract from the reality. No one wants a Disneyland experience from sacrifice and suffering. That’s not history, that’s entertainment.

There’s nothing wrong with a little show business, not when the show is already good enough.

A little help here?